Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank yesterday during demonstrations against Jewish settlements in which up to 21 others were injured. Israel said the dead man, Ala Abu Sharkh, a labourer from Dhahiriya near Hebron, was shot as he "tried to run over a soldier" at a checkpoint. He died of his wounds in an Israeli hospital.

But Palestinian officials said the man had tried to avoid the checkpoint by using a nearby dirt road and was 300 metres from Israeli forces when they opened fire. A second man was slightly wounded. Both were in their early 20s.

The self-rule administration of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, had called for the "day of anger", the first of three, with mass protests against Jewish settlements on occupied land as an expression of impatience at the incoming Israeli leader, Ehud Barak.

About 4,800 demonstrators took part in a total of nine protests near most big West Bank settlements and along the main north-south road in the Gaza Strip.

Outside the Netzarim settlement in Gaza, hundreds of stone-throwing protesters converged on a small Israeli army outpost. At one point, a firebomb was thrown, sending an army tent up in flames. A heavy cloud of tear gas hung over the scene.

Four teenagers, a Palestinian policeman and two Palestinian journalists were slightly hurt.

In similar disturbances elsewhere, three demonstrators were injured in Hebron and four Palestinian youths were injured near Tapuah settlement in the central West Bank when Israeli troops fired rubber bullets to disperse stone-throwers.

But the protests, which included a general strike by Palestinian merchants in annexed east Jerusalem, were generally peaceful and small.

Demonstrators chanted "Barak, listen, the Palestinian people will not kneel", and carried Palestinian flags and banners which read: "Barak, choose between peace and settlements."

Mr Barak has angered Palestinians by not moving more swiftly to resume peace negotiations.

Yesterday the former chief of staff was still trying to woo the defeated rightwing Likud party, and religious parties which support settlement construction, into joining his broad coalition.

Faisal Husseini, the Palestine Liberation Organisation official responsible for Jerusalem affairs, said yesterday's protests were "a warning to Mr Barak that he must do something to stop these [settlement] activities, otherwise the whole atmosphere will be a poisoned one".

"No peace with settlements," chanted demonstrators as they marched towards an Israeli military position on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

"We want to let Ehud Barak know that he must prove his peace intentions quickly by prohibiting all settlement expansion," said Hanna Nasser, the Christian mayor of Palestinian-ruled Bethlehem.